Tuesday, July 5, 2016

“Stranded in England without money or a ticket home, Mercy Starling takes a job working for a medieval reenactment company. After all, who wouldn’t want to pretend to live in the past, wield swords and long bows, and dress up in armor? And the best part of her summer job is Bestwood Hall...or rather, its intriguing new owner.

The painfully shy Alden Ainslie is overwhelmed by the medieval reenactors who invade the Tudor house he’s renovating, but he’s drawn to the bubbly Mercy. And he valiantly joins in the fun, dodging not just arrows, lances, and the odd sword thrust, but also some pretty suspicious—and potentially deadly—attacks on himself. Someone wants him to give up on the house. But Alden is desperate to prove himself—and win the heart of his lady fair...”

I found Daring In A Blue Dress to be:

Me In A Book Form

Hysterical

Cute

Despite owning the other two books in the Matchmaker in Wonderland series, I hadn't read them yet.

I am a hesitant contemporary reader. It takes a lot for them to capture my interest and to keep me from wondering away bored or storming away angry. When it came time for the Mobile Minions Street Team to read and review Daring In A Blue Dress, I knew it was finally time for me to read this series.

When I started reading Daring In A Blue Dress, I immediately had two thoughts:

I was Alden.

I was Mercy.

Because of that initial connection to the duo, I was invested in this book in a way I wasn't in either The Importance of Being Alice or A Midsummer's Night Romp.

Alden was a wonderful guy. He was smart and charming, and was socially awkward around women. Sentences came out wrong when he tried to talk to them. He'd also get so nervous that he'd panic and flee.

But he had his moments where he was able to focus on something else so strongly that his anxiety did not have a chance to surface. And in those moments we got to fall for the real him, the guy who deserved every kind of happiness imaginable.

As someone who suffers from social anxieties, I really felt where he was coming from.

Mercy was a spectacular counterpart to Alden. She was quirky and always seemed to be on the lookout for the next great thing. She bounced from degree to degree, never settling on one thing, until she no longer had the funds to do so. Her free-spiritedness was just what Alden needed to pull him out of his shell.

I laughed so much that I cried.

Daring In A Blue Dress was really silly and cute. It had the same brand of humor usually found Katie MacAlister's books. It also had medieval weapons, a crumbling old house, and a mystery quietly slipping along after our heroes.

Katie's unique brand of humor was definitely turned up a couple notches because I'm not sure how many pages went by where I wasn't smirking at something or outright laughing at something else. Practically every conversation with the bird conservatory people outright slew me.

Overall

Overall, Daring In A Blue Dress by Katie MacAlister was a very cute romance novel. I loved taking another path in the Matchmaker in Wonderland series. Even though I predicted everything and the bad guys were obvious, knowing what was going to happen did not bother me much. The journey was enjoyable, humorous, and all the mattered in the end.

Quotations

"Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if Alice was to find a woman for him. Perhaps the hellish nightmare of meeting someone new wouldn't be quite so terrible if Alice prepared the ground for him. Perhaps...
Perhaps he was out of his mind." (page 5)

"...a life filled with regret for all the desires left unexplored was a form of early death, and the only way to truly live was to take the opportunities presented." (Page 144)

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